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Published on: June 12, 2019
Development of a position-specific index of muscle strength to be used in stroke evaluation
Carolina Moriello1, Nancy E Mayo
1Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Objective:
To develop a position-specific index of muscle strength for individuals with stroke.
Design:
Cross-sectional design.
Setting:
A major teaching hospital in a Canadian urban city.
Participants:
Sixty-three patients with poststroke onset between 3 and 12 months.
Interventions:
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measure:
The muscle strength of the lower-extremity muscles was tested bilaterally in multiple positions using hand-held dynamometry.
Results:
A principal components analysis resulted in grouping the muscles of the affected and unaffected sides of the gravity related and gravity eliminated positions into 5 indices. The 5 indices were moderately to highly correlated (r2 range, .59-.81) with each other and so were combined into 1 global index. The gravity related muscle strength on the affected side was, on average, 85% of the unaffected side (range, 37%-157%); the gravity eliminated muscle strength of the affected side was, on average, 92% of the unaffected side (range, 53%-121%).
Conclusions:
This study resolves the methodologic issue of how to summarize multiple data points that relate to one construct, namely, strength of different muscle groups assessed in several positions.
